Vladimir Putin wants to turn large families into the traditional Russian family. But while only 5% of households are made up of a father, a mother, and three or more children, almost 40% of families are single-parent and, in the vast majority of cases, matriarchal. Katia and Anya – fictitious names to preserve their anonymity –, a mother and daughter aged 45 and 11 respectively, are an example of this archetypal model in a society historically marked by high male mortality, the central role of women in care, and, after the fall of the USSR, by high divorce rates.

In 1999, coinciding with the total solar eclipse visible in a small strip of the United Kingdom – the first in over seventy years – the Morgan family gathered in St. Davids, in the Welsh county of Pembrokeshire. Among those present were some elderly relatives who remembered the 1927 eclipse. "But, as often happens in the United Kingdom, the clouds prevented us from seeing the spectacle. Nevertheless, the most vivid memory is not of the missed eclipse, but of the family reunion".

Teo's weekends are usually spent among parks, slides, and trains. At almost two years old, any outing is an adventure, especially if it includes a visit to a train station. Neus Modoro and Kiyofumi Kurata try to make the most of their free days to spend time as a family, whether playing in one of Tokyo's many green spaces, visiting a zoo or museum, or occasionally taking a trip to Osaka to see his paternal grandparents. Theirs is an apparently ordinary family life, but marked by a reality that combines languages, references, and customs from two ends of Eurasia.